


Mister Self-Destruct

by Lise



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fucked Up, Gen, Hurt Loki, Hurt No Comfort, I'm sort of sorry but also not very sorry, Loki's a goddamn mess, Loki-centric, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred, Torture, like seriously though, terrifyingly literal self destruction, this is probably deeply disturbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:48:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4286001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki's worst enemy has always and will always be Loki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mister Self-Destruct

**Author's Note:**

> Don't ask me where it came from, I don't have a good answer for you. Sometimes these things happen and I just choose not to say no. (This is another repost from Tumblr, and also _total_ idfic. What does that say about my id? Nothing good, I know.)

Loki woke in completedarkness. He was standing, his hands bound over his head, locked together with heavy chains.

His heart started pounding at once, though he deliberately kept himself from reacting. He did not like darkness, not when it was like this, closing in around him and cutting him off. It felt too much like a memory of the Void, of falling, nothing but empty air in his lungs and black all around.

Loki twitched his fingers to call a light with his magic and the bottom dropped out of his stomach when it didn’t answer, something pressing it down within him. Some _one_ keeping him from his power. Fear choked his throat; if whoever had caught him was able to bind his magic, this might be serious. 

“Well, well,” Loki said, raising his voice. “Very clever, whoever you are. Would you care to show your face and gloat? That is traditional, is it not?” Only silence, and a faint echo, answered his voice. He could feel a strain in his shoulders and wondered how long he had been here. The dark felt heavy and confining, closing in on him and making his breath come short and quick. 

“I thought I would let you wait.” A familiar voice rolled out from the dark, and flame flared. Loki had to close his eyes and turn his head in the sudden flash of light, but was momentarily blinded anyway. When he opened his eyes again it was to see his own face looking back at him, a thin, cruel smile on his lips. “I know how much you hate the dark.”

Loki’s thoughts stuttered for a moment. It was  _his face,_ but looking at his feature on another - his face looked thin, almost gaunt, the shadows under his eyes like bruises. Loki fought not to shrink away, summoning a sneer. “What is this?” He asked. “An attempt to unnerve me? I am not frightened of my own face.”

“Are you not?” His double’s teeth bared in a terrible facsimile of a smile. “Do you not fear the  _monster,_ Loki?” Strong fingers grasped his jaw, his other hand bringing the torch he was carrying near enough to Loki’s face that he broke out in a sweat, trying to lean away from it. “Every time you look in a mirror does your skin not  _crawl,_ knowing what lurks underneath?”

Loki kept his sneer fixed, called scorn into his voice. “This is a truly pathetic imitation.”

“One of us is pathetic. I do not believe it is me.” The torch drew closer to the side of Loki’s face and he tried not to let his breath catch. He would not show fear. 

“It’s an interesting trick,” Loki said, keeping his voice conversational. “I’d be curious how you managed it. And who you are, really. Do you not want to take credit for your…success in capturing me?”

“I don’t need credit,” The torch drew back, at last, his double placing it in a sconce on the wall. “I only require the satisfaction of having you at my mercy. Not that I have any.” His double laughed, softly, and Loki felt a chill up his spine. He twisted his hands against the chains but there was no give, and his magic still wouldn’t answer his attempts to reach it. In the light of the torch he could see more of the room they were in - dark walls, nondescript. There was a stone table in the center, metal tools glittering in the torchlight.

His own expression of amusement mirrored back at him. Loki forced his hands to relax and tried to look bored. “Oh, please. How…melodramatic of you." 

His imitator smiled, slow and lazy, and flicked his fingers. A long, curved knife appeared in his hand - one of Loki’s daggers, he realized. His own make. "I could have gagged you,” he murmured. “But I wanted to hear you scream as I took you apart.”

Loki opened his mouth to retort in response, but was cut off when his imitator flipped the knife and slammed it through his shoulder. He gasped in surprise before the pain hit, and then it did and he had to bite back a yell. His captor grinned nastily and yanked the knife roughly back out. Loki could feel blood soaking his shoulder almost immediately - the blade was spelled to make wounds that resisted healing and it must have hit a vein or artery. He took a few sharp breaths through his nose and flashed his teeth in a sharp smile. 

“Is that all you have? I’m almost disappointed.”

“I haven’t even started.” He pulled back and set the dagger down on the table, picking up a heavy looking implement like a metal club and weighing it in one hand. “I hardly want you to bleed out already, after all.”

Loki felt a shudder run down his spine at the cold hate in that voice. “Is that all you want?” He asked, summoning a smile. His captor leaned in toward him. 

“Isn’t that all you are good for?” He asked, and then drew back his arm and swung for Loki’s body. The heavy metal end impacted Loki’s ribs and he felt something crack, white stars bursting behind his eyes as he tried to curl away from the blow and only ended up putting more weight on his arms. He didn’t have time to recover before the next strike came and he felt more of his ribs give, the third impacting his stomach and driving the air out of his lungs. He managed to hold back the urge to vomit though it rose in his throat. While he was still trying to regain his balance, something cracked into jaw. 

Loki’s vision went red and then black. He blinked, aware again, throbbing pain centered in the lower half of his face. He tried to move his jaw and couldn’t hold back a strangled scream. His eyes rolled and found his captor watching him, chest heaving, standing a step back like he was trying to regain control. 

When he saw Loki looking at him, however, he dropped the club and reached out to touch his face. Loki tried to flinch back, but not fast enough; even the light brush of fingers made his whole face flare with pain. “You know this is what you deserve,” his double murmured, almost gently. “Better than. You  _know_ that.” He grabbed Loki’s face again, and this time he did scream as bone ground back into place and mended, the familiar agony of battlefield healing. 

“Who are you,” Loki forced out, even though moving his freshly healed jaw  _hurt._  

“You ought to recognize your own face,” his captor said. His smile was awful, mad. Familiar. 

“You should know that I do not take kindly to imitations,” Loki said, forcing himself to smile back through the pain. 

“Imitations,” the other Loki said. “Funny you should put it like that. After all…isn’t that the sum total of what we are?” He moved closer, reached up for Loki’s bound hands and grabbed one of them, taking the index finger and bending it back until Loki’s tendons popped, then further until the bone snapped. Loki just managed to swallow his scream. “An imitation of an Aesir…” The middle finger, next, and Loki thrashed, trying to jerk his hand away unsuccessfully. “…an imitation of a brother…” Another finger went, punctuating the word  _brother._ “…an imitation of a prince, of a _son…_ ” The other Loki wrenched his thumb out of the socket on the last word, and this time Loki couldn’t hold back a strangled scream. His double released his now useless hand and stepped back, lip curling. “Look at you.  _Us._ Pathetic.”

Loki tried to force his breath back under control, though it was difficult, pain shooting down into his arm with each small twitch of his hand. “If I am so wretched why choose to take my face?”

“Or perhaps you’ve taken mine,” his captor said, baring his teeth. “And you are the copy and I the original. Have you considered that?” Loki said nothing, and the other Loki laughed, harsh and grating. “Will you look at that. Silver tongue turned to lead already.”

He remembered those words, that taunt. Who else would have overheard it, but him, the Warriors Three, Sif, and Thor? Who else-

He gasped in sudden, surprised pain and looked down to see the same dagger from before buried in his side. “Do not get distracted, pray,” his double said. “I want your full attention.” He yanked the blade out of Loki’s side and Loki shuddered, biting his tongue so as not to cry out.

His double lowered the blade and returned to the table with its array of implements, picking up one, then another, considering them and then setting them down. Blood poured out of the fresh wound, dripping down the outside of his leg. “I was going to pull you apart a piece at a time,” the other Loki said conversationally. “Vivisect you, you know. Force feed you pieces of your own liver before I cut out your still beating heart.” Loki tried to keep his expression blank as that feral, mad stare was directed back at him, his captor picking up a narrow, curved blade. “But that’s the trouble with chaining you vertically. Everything would just fall out all at once.” Loki swallowed without meaning to, a chill going down his spine. His double considered the edge of the knife he was holding. “I suppose we’ll just have to try something else.”

The other Loki moved toward him. Loki tried to press back, involuntarily, but when the blade flicked at his chest it was only a small cut, slicing a narrow strip of skin away from his chest. His double met his eyes and smirked. His free hand came up, pinched the small flap of skin between thumb and forefinger, and  _yanked._

Loki screamed, throwing his head back hard enough that his skull slammed into the wall, and then again. Skin didn’t peel neatly away from muscle – it ripped and tore and he could hear the awful meat sound of it, hot blood running in rivulets down his chest to his stomach, pain swallowing everything-

It stopped, just before Loki hit the point when he might have passed out. Loki’s head fell forward but one glance at the strip of skin, still attached, made him feel sick and he closed his eyes. “If you want me dead,” he rasped.

“I do,” the other Loki said. “But I want you to suffer, first.” The hand not holding the knife came up, cradled his face. Loki could feel his own blood smearing on his cheek, his chest throbbing with hot, angry pain.

“Do you want me to beg you for an end?” Loki said, calling all the mockery into his voice he could manage.

“No,” his double said, almost gently. “I already know you want it. And your asking doesn’t matter. This is…truly…only for my satisfaction.” Another flick of the blade.

“No,” Loki moaned, before he could stop himself, but it didn’t stop a thing. Another strip of skin was pulled away from his chest. This time it seemed to last much longer, and Loki didn’t bother to try to hold back, screaming until his voice gave out as though someone would hear. As though someone would  _care._  He hardly even felt the third flick of the blade on top of the urgent agony of raw muscle, but when he actually pulled-

Loki thought he might have blacked out for a moment. His head was spinning and his chest felt tight enough that he could hardly breathe.

“Weak,” his captor said. “Look how little pain you can withstand. How easy it is to break you.”

 _I lasted for months under the Chitauri,_ Loki wanted to snarl.  _I lasted for months more in the nothingness of the void._ He made himself say nothing and tried to glare, struggling to regain his footing. His bare feet slipped and he realized that he was standing in a puddle of his own blood.

“This suits you,” his own voice said. Loki focused on his face with difficulty. “Bloody and bound. And still defiant. As though there is any hope for you at all.”

Loki sucked in a breath and worked moisture into his mouth. It tasted faintly bloody – had he bit his tongue? – but no matter.

He spat in his double’s face. “If I am damned,” he rasped, “you will be too.”

The other Loki reared back, for a moment perfectly startled, face splattered with spittle. He wiped a gobbet from his cheek, and then his expression transformed, twisted into rage. “You dare,” he said, voice lowering into a register Loki knew. He grinned, madly. “You  _dare-_ ”

His captor grabbed the spelled knife off the table and stabbed Loki in the gut, driving the dagger in to the hilt. He yanked it out and stabbed again to the right, to the left, each blow puncturing bowel and vital organs. Loki didn’t scream at any of the blows, just jerked, the only sound he made a quiet  _unh_  when the blade went in.

“You are nothing,” he forced out, when the other Loki paused, chest heaving. “A cheap – a cheap  _pretender_  and whatever you do to me you will die yourself and be devoured by Nidhogg in Hel-”

He felt the dagger pierce his heart, slammed into his chest hard enough to splinter the sternum. Loki’s voice died and he gaped at his own face, twisted in a snarl that became a smile of pure, cruel satisfaction.

There was a roaring in his ears, darkness starting to close in at the edges of his vision. He was going to die. He was going to  _die,_ here, like this-

“I will see  _you_  in Hel, then,” he heard, and the slurping sound of a blade exiting flesh, and then nothing.

* * *

Once again, it was over too soon.

Loki looked down at the dead meat that was his own corpse, the smile fading along with the momentary release that had come with watching himself gasp out his last breaths. He nudged the body with his foot. It was already beginning to dissolve, the magic that made it corporeal coming apart at the seams. Soon nothing would be left but the memory of planting a blade in his own heart and feeling its final stuttering beats. 

Loki looked down at his hands, already clean.

The satisfaction didn’t last long enough. Maybe next time he could do it more slowly. Not lose his temper. Cut out its tongue first, perhaps, so that it couldn’t speak. Put out its eyes so that he didn’t have to meet his own gaze.

 _A cheap pretender,_ this one had said. Loki felt his mouth twist in a kind of wry amusement.

It didn’t know the half of it.


End file.
